Last Minute Listing: Scratch + Sniff Adventures in Olfaction @ The Book Club

LondonistLast Minute Listing: Scratch + Sniff Adventures in Olfaction @ The Book Club

Light up your olfactory bulbs under the Book Club's unusual ceiling. Image by M@.

Recall the smells of the 1920s in an unusual 'perfume tasting' event tonight.

London has a vast and brilliant array of theatre, concerts, clubs, restaurants, museums, galleries...we could go on. Yet amidst this cultural smorgasbord, something is missing. What about the smells? Granted, the odours you might associate with the capital are more likely to be grit, tarmac, sewage and petrol fumes than the fine fragrances of the Paris fashion houses, but that's where you've been missing out.

Perfume 'tasting', the olfactory equivalent of wine-tasting, has now become an established pastime - Bruton Street parfumer Miller Harris recently held an exploration into their rose perfumes, and now Scratch + Sniff is taking it one step further, engaging our noses and our minds in an event that conjures the smells and the ambience of the 1920s.

Hosted by historian Lucy Moore, and replete with sniffable samples from Les Senteurs, Scratch + Sniff promises an evening of cultural know-how mixed with sensory delights. Future events, such as male identity and scent, or scent and the movies, span the spectrum of intellectual to popular, sublime to ridiculous.